A storage area network is a high-speed, high-bandwidth inter-server network utilizing integrated hardware (usually fibre channel) and software to provide a robust, high-speed storage backbone. A SAN enables clusters of servers to share storage arrays with exclusive data access or to share data on common storage devices, depending on the SAN topology. SAN networks are useful, for example, in fully networked enterprises that require storage of substantial amounts of information collected on each customer and each transaction. Storage area networks (SANs) offer very high-speed, high-availability pools of storage that can be shared throughout an enterprise, yet managed through simplified operations.
Topology mapping is an important feature of SAN management software. To perform topology mapping, SAN management software seeks to discover all devices and connections. In one known implementation, the software must collect sufficient information to represent detailed properties of the connections. Among the information required are exact port numbers and port type of a switch to which a particular device is connected. This discovery is usually performed using communication paths such as SNMP over IP other than the paths used for storage and retrieval of data. However, some network managing systems do probe for this information over the storage and retrieval communication paths. In one configuration, connectivity devices such as switches are queried by the management software for information that is interpreted to identify the network topology. However, hubs do not provide complete management information and may not appear to the visualization software. Thus, inferred topology maps may not be truly representative, hindering effective management of the SAN. Although hub manufacturers may, in the future, provide complete connection information, direct manual user intervention is required to determine a complete SAN topology in at least one known management system. The management system is required to record information from the manual intervention to ensure that users are not required to repeat this intervention should the topology of the network need to be inferred in the future.